The Evil Touch: "Happy New Year, Aunt Carrie" (1973)

In “Happy New Year, Aunt Carrie” a woman limited to a wheelchair, babysits for her nephew and niece on New Year’s Eve. Across the way from Carrie’s (Julie Harris) home, a raucous party is held in an apartment to celebrate the occasion. Unfortunately, an unwanted guest -- a murderer -- spoils it. Looking through her own window, Carrie sees the murderer, and worse, the assassin sees her. 

Aunt Carrie prepares for the worst as the killer, Mr. Frank Bigelow makes his way to her apartment and plans to eliminate the only witness to his crime. But Mr. Bigelow has not counted on dealing with a “lucky amateur.”

This week on The Evil Touch, the flavor of the week is definitely Hitchcock pastiche. “Happy New Year, Aunt Carrie” eschews all supernatural elements, and is basically Rear Window (1954) on the cheap, with a character confined to a wheelchair observing what he/she believes to be a murder. The bulk of the episode builds suspense, as the gangster comes to get Carrie, and warns here “it’s just a matter of time. I’ll get you.”  Our narrator, Anthony Quayle ponders “how much of that (new) year” Bigelow will let Carrie live through.

As for Carrie, she is smart, and knows the secret to survival: “We’ve got to get our wits about us.” The episode cuts between three settings, mostly: Carrie’s apartment, the murder, and the New Year’s Eve Party. Fireworks are inter-cut with harrowing events for punctuation, and Auld Lang Syne plays on the installment’s soundtrack.  “Happy New Year, Aunt Carrie” plays like a not terribly memorable episode of Alfred Hitchcock  Presents or some other crime anthology, at least until Carrie gathers her aforementioned wits.

With the help of the children, Carrie mounts a strong defense. In fact, her defense of her apartment forecasts, pretty much, the whole of Home Alone (1990). Specifically, Carrie lays booby traps for Bigelow, including marbles on the floor, to trip him up.  In short, he doesn’t stand a chance, which Quayle writes off to good luck on Carrie’s part.

“Happy New Year, Aunt Carrie,” offers a good performance by Julie Harris but nevertheless strikes me as a not-terribly interesting or original tale. The set-up comes straight from Hitchcock, and in execution the episode can’t hope to match or even approximate the master of suspense. The lack of a real horror aspect to the tale makes one wonder what market, precisely, The Evil Touch hoped to corner. Four episodes in, the series is a bit unfocused, and helter skelter. It doesn’t yet have anything approaching an identity, only a format held together by Quayle’s narrations, and admonitions, at the end of each installment, of “pleasant dreams.”  That last comment is appropriate because this is one episode you could sleep through.

Next week’s tale with Darren McGavin, however, is an anti-rational doozy: “A Game of Hearts.”